


Lightning

by SeaMint



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmates, Stanley doesn't like being touched, and that's trouble u see, they're soulmates harold, wtf else do i tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 09:44:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17620112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaMint/pseuds/SeaMint
Summary: It comes as lightning, bright and quick, breath held like a stone in his throat. There would be more, he had hoped, fistfuls of paper star sentences that dotted his mind like abstract pointillism, but all he'd come up with is a cliché declaration, uttered many times before.There he is.Or: A Soulmate AU where you find your soulmate by touch. Bill Denbrough’s unsure why he’s so compelled to touch the untouchable.





	Lightning

**Author's Note:**

> hiya !!!! dw i'm still writing derry summers but a girl needs a break once in a while ja feel? anywayyyy i wrote most of this on my phone while waiting for me mum to pick me up but it turned into something great and i'm hella proud !!! quick explanation of this au:
> 
> so you find your soulmate by touch. They only feel the tiniest bit different from other people, but human skin is, as they say, sensitivé enough to do so. Science backed, yo. Hence, not wanting to be touched is like . a big deal as u can see later on

What comes as a shock should always be illogical. It's shocking to learn barcode scanners read the white lines and that technically, the colour of something is really everything but, with the object absorbing every ray of the spectrum and deflecting what one perceives it to be. 

It's a shock, though, to learn Bill has a soulmate. The statement alone is simple and logical, _everyone_ has a soulmate. But he thinks special people are bound to other special people, and they make even more special memories together. It's hard to fathom someone would be eternally bound to him by the universe and Venus herself. _Him,_ stuttering, average, underwhelming Bill Denbrough. He's sure they made a mistake.

But his mom smoothed his hair and wiped his pearls of tears before they head out for his first day of kindergarten. “It's okay,” she soothed in his ear as she's kneeled down in front of him. “Aren't you excited?”

“I don't w-w-want to go!” He'd sobbed, throwing his arms around her neck and ruffling his perfectly ironed shirt. 

“You might meet someone special there,” she replied, gently pried his necklace of arms and wiped more tears off his cheeks.

“Special?”

“Your soulmate, Bill.” She chanced him a grin, still held him close and warm near her heart. “But if you still don’t want to go, I understand.”

The gears had turned in his little head and his feet had padded towards the front door in tiny steps that showed no patience for the universe that gave way to them.

He didn't meet his soulmate then, or any of his days in kindergarten. Children loved to touch and push but they never did go quite near the stutterer. He understood. He'd never go quite near himself if he had the chance, either.

He assumes his soulmate isn't hidden in pug-faced children that threw things at the boring teacher, but they could be hidden behind the finger paint-stained hands of Richie Tozier, if he focused hard enough. Richie Tozier had the vocabulary and humour of a 13 year-old, telling Bill he could ace kindergarten even if there were nothing to excel at. Constant boredom had him memorise his times tables to the sevens, and he said he could learn more if not for the new joys of teasing his next-door neighbour. And though Bill didn't understand what multiplication was, he nodded with vigour anyway.

First grade in a new school brings a familiar sort of anxiety. He didn't sob to his mother, but tingling hope pricked his fingertips and he received the same comfort sentiment from his mom.

"Maybe you'll meet her this time," she encouraged. Her soft goose-feather touch on his elbow is the last thing he took from home before he scampered with his too-short legs onto the school bus. 

No one bothered to move for him on the bus, but Ben Hanscom seemed not to mind. For a first grader, he had the eyes of someone who's read more books than a library could hold. He weaved art of his speech, each word having little stuttering Bill yearning for more. He pointed out each "danger" kid he recognised from kindergarten, and in turn Bill warned him of those he knew of, too. They exchanged lunches because Bill isn’t too fond of peanut butter, and Ben gave him goldfish crackers and a chocolate pudding. If he thought of it hard enough maybe the moment their fingertips brush against each other would generate that soulmate moment to hang hearts above his head forever.

He didn’t meet his soulmate that year, either. Hanging out with “the beaver” and “fatso” didn’t adorn him in good light. He did, however, learn his fractions and times tables, coming up with what’s living and non-living, and reading books Ben says are good. He has his fun, but it’s not what he’d hoped for.

Fifth grade introduced a new facet of bullying, wherein actions may speak louder than words but words form paper cuts in places one can’t put a bandaid on. He wanted to give up school, perhaps to ease the stinging, teeth-grinding sensation their words carved into his skin.

Beverly Marsh greeted him with whiplash beauty and a big wide grin unfit for the lonely silence of detention. She handed him scraps of starburst wrappers to help her make a chain long enough to wrap around Jupiter twice. She told him of scraped knees and adventures in Portland, going to aquariums and shooting at old windows with aim as perfect as an eagle’s. This didn’t, at all, faze her wrapper-folding, each movement she made with her fingers still as perfect as that of before. He thought, like he did with Richie and Ben, that if he hoped for it enough, she’ll reach out and know, as old birds come home after winter. 

He didn’t meet his soulmate that year, either, but maybe he should have seen it coming.

The summer before freshman year, he’s oddly hopeful. Ben and Beverly and Richie came down with him to the barrens every Thursday to catch tadpoles and perhaps catch another soulmate-less hopeful. Perhaps the stars will be kinder, he prayed every night. Perhaps the moon will give way. 

He met Eddie Kaspbrak three days after Ben and Beverly announced they were soulmates. That they’d known for a while. That they’d thought long and hard about it, too. Eddie Kaspbrak is Richie’s next-door neighbour, much too irritable for Bill to imagine he’d put up with Richie Tozier for that long. He’d tried to imagine the same as when he’d met the other three, cotton-soft touches that filled his nose with the sharp scent of alcohol, but he felt a little guilty that he couldn’t, as Richie looked at Eddie like he were made by Venus herself, specifically to be perfect, to be rid of this world’s sins unlike the rest of them. 

He couldn’t, because Eddie looked at Richie like that, too. Bill supposed he could wait for those, if it meant having to watch his friends look content with the breeze.

Bill came across Mike Hanlon after buying new socks from a dinky novelty store that had them in patterns of every colour he could think of. There were little dancing pizzas on the cobalt blue pair he’d stuffed in his bag, and he’d bought a different one for Georgie, too, at his mother’s insistence.

Mike Hanlon had him crashing into a pole and seeing stars from beyond this system, and with a light laugh had helped him up from his daze. Blue-pink nebulas still lined his vision and he couldn’t quite comprehend the moment as much as he’d liked to. Still, Mike’s fingers were worked to the bone with callouses and grime, and his smile knew no bounds of sunlight. His touch was flowers growing from Bill’s skin that peppered him red with petal-soft sentiment. 

Bill didn’t meet anyone special that summer, either.

He’d asked his mom how she found his dad. From the couch he raised his mug and smirked at Sharon Denbrough with mischief and love printed into his lips. Though how was he to differentiate touches when they’re all cotton-soft and warm? How does he differentiate love from the universe’s will?

“They’re not all too different, how everyone feels like,” she explained, and Bill already knew that. Beverly Marsh felt like teddy bear fur and Richie Tozier was like bird feathers. Ben Hanscom was a childhood blanket right out of the dryer and Eddie Kaspbrak was cotton left in the sun. Mike Hanlon was soft like flowers and summer. But in the end, they were all the same, when stripped of his pretentious nouns and adjectives. Soft and warm, like people feel like. 

How could he find the one, in that lightning-fast moment of brushed fingertips and lacework thoughts as soon as they happen?

“B-but how do I know which one’s m-m-mine?” He whined and Georgie laughed into his cereal.

“You just do.”

He stomped out in fevered frustration as his mom and dad exchanged soft, knowing looks.

* * *

 Bill Denbrough is unsure why he’s so compelled to touch the untouchable, fingers pulled in like magnets to his metal, but he finds himself mouth agape, and not because of the school orchestra’s performance. Perhaps it is, but his eyes draw themselves towards the violinist pressing his fingers into his violin like he wanted to scar his fingertips and bring about crystalline blood wreaking havoc on the floor.

He asks Richie about the hard-pressed violinist who seems to hate his hands like they brought forth hell. Or perhaps Bill is reading into it, giving it more meaning than it should, having seen a face that glared ice-hot daggers into his right hand. Maybe he got too caught up in the perfectionism of it all, no bad notes ringing from his strings and his war-torn face a manifestation of focus, above all.

Nevertheless, what Richie tells him as he fixes his bass into its bag presses fear into Bill’s chest, unknown hurt merging itself with the slash of a knife. He understands, somehow, Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, with a thousand blades in his back. He’s unsure why he feels this way.

“Stanley Uris,” he says succinctly, running a hand through his gel-clumped curls in an attempt to undo the order his dad had put it through. He mutters a string of curses as he takes a strand into his fingers and pulls it apart himself. “Don’t touch him, he has things.”

“Like an STD?” Eddie yelps from beside Richie’s Bass on the floor. Richie laughs and gives him a noogie that further ruins his sleep-tousled hair.

“No, silly nut,” he says with a face that looked as if his heart were melting like candy. He looks at Bill, then, with a more serious face. “He doesn’t like it. Don’t try anything I’d do.”

Stanley, then, in what seems to have been fated to happen, passes by and time turns its clock backwards. For a quick second, all six of them stares as he rushes past with his violin case looking a little too big slung over his back. For a second, he catches eyes with Bill, and it lasts for as long as Bill can replay the history of the universe in his head, as planets collide and new worlds form beneath greater fingers.

The million words he knows slips from his tongue, and he loses the untouchable to distance and an empty backstage.

It doesn’t help, not in the least bit, that he starts seeing him everywhere, too. Again, Bill felt a strange, almost painful inclination to reach out, graze curious finger tips against his pale skin. Maybe it would feel like cool water on warm skin, sticky as it dries under summer skies and the sun. It could be warm, too, marshmallows roasting to golden brown over a small bonfire out under nature.

All Bill knows is that when it happens, the universe will deal him a kinder hand.

The rest of their school seems to spread telephone rumours about it, passed on and changed into versions better or worse, the kid that can’t be touched. Bill finds himself listening intently to Greta Keene’s table’s hushed discussion on the matter.

“Maybe he doesn’t believe in soulmates,” one of them mutters as she chews on her nails.

“Maybe he doesn’t want one,” Greta snickers in return, and Bill can’t quite comprehend why that would warrant the slightest notion of a laugh. His hands itch to do something, as they always do when he comes to conclusions of Stanley Uris and the mysteries he holds.

Mike has to restrain him from sprinting the distance and grabbing Stanley’s hand, if only to keep Bill from embarrassing them.

His end comes bundled up in a large blanket of needle-thin rain coming up ten minutes before seventh period ends. As students stream out of the school, getting into cars and running the rest of the way with their homework shielding their heads, Bill stays back for a consultation with his chemistry teacher. He’d told the others not to wait up for him, having kept a trifold umbrella all school year for this exact situation. 

He's unsure if he's lucky or if the universe wanted to correct a mistake when Stanley Uris is caught under the short section of the school entrance covered from the rain. Thunder booms after wisps of barely-visible light streaks through the sky like Jupiter is still caught and furious under Beverly Marsh's Super Long Starburst Chain and trying to escape.

They stand together for a bit, Bill trying to make out the minimum damage of the rain on the streets. He looks over and Stanley is furiously texting someone on his phone. There’s an obvious lack of an umbrella hanging from his arms.

Someone in the wind sings to Bill. _This is your chance_ , it sings in its fae-voiced lullaby. _You’ve asked your questions, now know the answers._

For quite a bit he assumed it meant reach out and brush his fingers with yours, leave soft touches on his elbow and sprint away before the consequences befall him. But Bill won’t be a creep today. He’d left his impulse behind for a better take at curiosity.

“Hey,” he breathes, and he hopes, glancing over at Stanley's direction. For an eternity Bill can’t possibly count the seconds of, Stanley keeps typing on his phone. Perhaps he didn’t hear him, but his heart, sinking down to the trenches of his feet, thinks otherwise. He’s about to say it again, but Stanley pockets his phone and flashes him a polite smile. It’s tiny, and if Bill wasn’t actively looking for it he’d have missed it, but the tiny quirk of his mouth is enough for his heart to rocket back up and completely miss his chest, instead settling for his throat.

“Hi,” he says back, eyeing the black umbrella with a cord tied to Bill’s wrist. Bill doesn’t blame him, he’d be doing the same if he weren’t so prepared for uncharacteristic rain. “You’re… Richie’s friend, right?”

Something inside Bill lights up at being recognised. As Richie’s friend, sure, but still, Stanley remembers. Bill gives him a lopsided smile of his own, trying to back the full extent of the supernova the recognition caused inside him. “Yeah,” he confirms. “And y-you’re Stanley Uris.”

“Oh,” Stanley pulls his eyes away from Bill’s general direction, demeanour switching to match that of the weather, grey and sickly with no room for hope. “You’ve probably heard a lot about me, huh?”

“N-not too m-much!” Bill tries to amend. He takes a step towards the boy, at which Stanley shoots him a fearful look of betrayal, eyes regarding him warily. “I. I d-don’t think it matters that you’d rather be l-left alone,” he continues, going back to his original place, looking back out at the street-turned-mirror. The wind tells Bill he’s losing him, try _harder_ , _you want your answers, right?_ “I know it’s n-not because of the soulmate thing.”

“Don’t you think it’d be better if it were?” Stanley sighs wistfully, his breath mixing in with the wind that sung advice into Bill’s ears. Should he tell Stanley? That Bill’s strange obsession with curling at least a pinky around his is nauseating and head-pounding? That Bill has ran out of words trying to fill the void of what could be? That the universe seems to keep pushing him toward it? That maybe Bill has thought of what the universe wanted so much he actually feels it his own desire?

Is that was this was? Desire, not curiosity?

“W-what?”

“I… I don’t know.” Stanley keeps his eyes trained on the street. “It’s stupid. I’m. Weird.” He leaves it at that, and they’re back in the empty backstage, the distance. _He’s losing him_.

“D-do you mind if I a-ask you something?” Bill blurts, if only an attempt to find more answers or to keep this going. Stanley shakes his head, a silent _‘go on’_ as they wait out whatever this has become. “D-do you – Do you w- _want_ a soulmate?” He can’t keep the words steady as they flow out, and maybe it’s his heart racing for the answer, but he hopes Stanley doesn’t notice.

“Doesn’t everyone?” He says softly, and like his smile, if Bill wasn’t actively looking for it, the reply would’ve been lost to the wind. Stanley’s face grew solemn, eyes half-lidded as they search for meaning at his feet. Bill’s mind grows numb with cold the more he stares at it. In a move most likely to get him sick, he hands out the umbrella, to Stanley’s silent shock. “What’s this?” He asks.

“I t-think you’d hate it just as much t-to get w-wet,” Bill supplies, and it’s as simple as that, but it doesn’t explain it enough, apparently, as he watches the cogs turn in Stanley’s head as he debates taking the umbrella. “D-don’t worry about me,” he assures him. “I d-don’t care m-much about my b-bag.”

“If you say so,” Stanley mutters as he reaches out to take the other end of the still-closed umbrella. Bill thinks, for a moment, lightning-fast as the thought zaps through his head, that he can stick a finger out and touch the untouchable, finally feel the reality of how he compares to Mike’s soft petals and Ben’s warm nostalgia. If his nose would fill up with Eddie’s antiseptic should he stand a little closer, see a sliver of Beverly Marsh’s whiplash beauty if he stared a little longer. Would he, like when he first met Richie Tozier, screw his eyes shut and hold his breath in long-awaited agony, and maybe connect the threads set out for them to spill red like Venus’ lips?

He doesn’t. The wind blows in betrayal. Bill pushes the thought to the back of his mind, and maybe he’ll wait until Stanley lets him.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Stanley asks as he opens up the umbrella and sets it above his shoulder. He looks at Bill expectantly, polite smile warping into patience as he settles another hand on the strap of his backpack.

“It’s Bill.”

“Okay, Bill,” Stanley says, and he visibly shakes as he extends a hand, his silent show of nervous consent as he looks Bill with anticipation smearing itself over his eyes. “You know I don’t usually do this, but maybe I’ll make an exception.”

Bill doesn’t try to hold back the supernova, the bright lights of happiness shining through the thin gaps of his teeth as he smiles and reaches out, too, the wind whispering _finally_ , and the rain seemingly dying down just for this. _This_ , like the universe intended. His mind readies the long list, _cool water and bonfires_ , and Bill doesn’t even think about his soulmate as he gets caught up in all of this, like a tornado had wiped out everything that mattered, that’s _ever_ mattered, and he’s left with him and Stanley. 

He shakes the hand of the untouchable. His heart stops and the rest of him goes into overdrive.

It comes as lightning, bright and quick, breath held like a stone in his throat. There would be more, he had hoped, fistfuls of paper star sentences that dotted his mind like abstract pointillism, but all he'd come up with is a cliché declaration, uttered many times before.

_There he is._

“There you are.”

Stanley doesn’t let go.

“Here I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, i hope you enjoyed! Leave comments and kudos and what not <3
> 
> come say hi! I'm [quipcrly](http://quipcrly.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!


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